


What Came Inbetween

by orphan_account



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the only way to come back to life is to die trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How He Fell

A hand.

Stretching to meet him, his last strand of hope; a final chance like a single fibre of rope holding up an anvil on a children's cartoon. But despite this, it was an enemy- an enemy attached so solidly to a friend- offering him what would cause all he had to be lost.

The hand was taken, although he wasn't sure why. There was something between the determined expression on Hershel's face and the way the poor boy's hand clamped onto his own that convinced Randall that the last thing he wanted was for him to fall. For a moment, the aspiring archaeologist wondered what would have been had he not dragged Hershel along to this particular expedition. 

And he wondered what would have been if they had not gone at all.

Randall wasn't paying much attention to anything he was saying. In his mind's eye he saw himself looking upwards, to somewhere he can't reach. He tried to work his way up the rock face, one foot after the other, but the stone crumbled and falls away, down, down, into the god-knows-what that lay below. He slipped, just a few heart stopping inches.

Hershel was still talking.

Something about dropping the mask. Something about another hand.

Randall talked back.

"I was so close."

His voice was but a murmur over the cracking rock face and the swirling waters that he knew lay a way beneath him. He bowed his head, then looked up to meet the desperate eyes of his best friend. He could feel the surrender pooling in his own. He knew, somewhere, that something this good could never be so real. It was only right that a cocky seventeen year old boy could be so close and yet so far.

"I'm sorry, Hershel." he said, louder, and everything registered in Hershel's expression all at once, all too fast, and the hand gripped tighter. "I let you down. Tell Angela I'm sorry."

_I can't pull you up!_

_Now give me your other hand!_

Hershel's voice was just an echo to him now. 

"Take the mask. It's yours."

Randall's own fingers tightened on the heavy golden object in his hand. He felt a ridge on it, a shallow canyon in the metal, where he was sure there wasn't one before.

He paid it no mind, and prepared to raise it, like an anchor in the form of a memory, some sort of trinket to keep him tied to the earth, with Henry and Angela and Hershel. He wanted to be tethered as close to them as he could be, because he knew that even if he were free, he wouldn't have the courage to fly away.

"You must solve the final puzzle, Hershel!"

He slipped again. Another few centimetres between them, and Randall suddenly felt closer to the bottom of the pit than he did the hand holding him up, urgently clasping. Both palms were lined with a layer of dirt and a layer of sweat and he was slipping further, slowly, but neither of them mention it.

He felt himself smile, and he reached upwards with the mask. Hershel didn't even prepare to take it.

"Here."

That was when something snapped. It snapped and it broke and Randall fell, further than he could ever imagine. To his dismay he recognised the mask still clasped in his fist, his fingers curling around the mouth gap; and he saw it crystal clear, despite the dust and the darkness and the dizzying power of gravity pulling him down at a speed he could barely begin to comprehend. 

And he wondered.

What good did it do him?

Or Hershel?

Or Angela or Henry or even his father?

A heap of gold he would never even see was worthless to him and the key to something vastly bigger was in his hand, falling into oblivion. The legacy, the fame, and _the discovery of the century_ would die with him, and it will be buried with him under years upon years of collected soil and shame.

He heard his name and almost choked.

He had never heard so much devastation in a single word.

He couldn't find the voice to call back, and the cold air that whipped past him as he fell took the breath he didn't have.

The realisation was slow, like the anticipation to see the sun dip below the horizon when watching it set.

He was going to die.

He clutched the mask to his chest, silently praying stupid, hopeful things, that it might save him, that he might live.

_I'm going to die._


	2. How He Was Caught

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so rushed! I'm really tired haha

And then he met the water.

He had forgotten about it, the potential end to his fall, swirling and roaring and cascading beneath him, but that just made the moment of contact worse. He tried to scream, to make any sort of noise over his breathing, but he was up to his neck in ice cold river and he was choking on the musty air of the cave. He grappled at the side, at the slick black rock, but his fingers slipped and he fell back into the water.

It took all of the strength that he had left not to black out, but he was teetering, and he clinged to the mask for dear life as he was sent rushing down inside the cave. He couldn't see a thing, and the inky blackness constricted him as he tried with all his might to keep his head above the water.

At one point, he found a plank of wood. He wasn't coherent enough to dwell on the convenience of its appearance, or how it actually got there.

The water was freezing, and he felt himself slipping again, a different kind of slipping, falling into a place where he knew things would come to an end. He didn't even try to fight it, because there was no helping hand holding him up this time, and there was no Hershel with his echo of a voice trying to wind a rope to help him climb.

The last thing he saw before he was gone for this world was a speck of bright, bright white. He can barely look at it after what seems like an age in the dark.

And it was light at the end of his tunnel.

\--

What he woke up to, however, was not light. There was a dim room, curtains drawn over a window, and a square of light around them. It was plain, fresh, light; with walls the colour of milky coffee and a lingering scent of cleanness only achieved by freshly washed linen. 

Randall sat up, eager to see more of this strange place, but he was constricted by a faraway, thudding pain, in his chest and shoulders and neck, and he fell back to the pillow. For a few minutes he lay, completely still, with nothing but a whitewashed ceiling for company.

His eyes asked it a plethora of questions- very typical, very human questions, such as 'where am I' and 'how am I alive'- but it remained as unresponsive as a ceiling could be.

He didn't stay that way for long. Only a few minutes passed before a stout, aged woman with a face of wrinkles set in tanned, cardboard skin bustled her way in. Randall couldn't help but notice how kind her eyes looked, despite her unfriendly seeming frown.

She set the tray she was carrying down on the windowsill, and sorted through the contents. Randall didn't suspect that she had seen that he was awake. 

She turned around with a jug of water and a flannel, sighing and folding the cloth in half.

When she looked up, Randall blinked widely at her, and she almost dropped the jug. When she steadied herself, she looked at him with a soft kind of strictness, and what sounded like relief had flooded into her voice.

"Oh, son. You're awake!"

Randall blinked again. _Son?_

"Mother?"

She laughed, but there was a muted tingling of concern there, too. She sat herself on the stool beside the bed, and dipped the flannel into the jug, wrung it out, and draped it across Randall's forehead. It both woke him up and relaxed him at once.

"No, dear. I'm a complete stranger to you." She pressed on the flannel gently, then stood to go and sort the other items on the tray. "Oh! You must be so confused, I understand."

She stopped sorting, and stood up straight with her back to Randall. He could almost hear her thinking.

"What do you remember, Randall?"

Randall didn't answer the question. He instead asked a new one.

"How do you know my name?"

She shuffled back to the bed and took a purple jacket from the foot of it. It seemed very familiar to Randall- the cut, the colour. She held it up to the little light that enters the room.

"Your name was on the label of this. You were wearing it when we found you."

Randall chewed his lip for a moment, figuring, then decided to answer her earlier question.

"I don't recall an awful lot, to be honest."

The fussing and bustling seemed to intensify for a moment, and the woman looked up with an expression of understanding, and for a moment, Randall felt that he would be okay if this woman _were_ his mother.

She didn't say anything in response before a door downstairs creaked open, and then slammed. She startled.

"Sounds like my brother's home."


End file.
